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The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), established in September 2006, is an Institute-wide initiative designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems.
MITEI’s Research Program
The MITEI interdisciplinary research program focuses on the following:
- Innovative technologies and underlying policy analysis that will improve how we produce, distribute, and consume conventional energy.
- Transformational technologies to develop alternative energy sources that can supplement and displace fossil fuels, including the economic, management, social science and policy dimensions needed for this transformation.
- Global systems to meet energy and environmental challenges through a multidisciplinary systems approach that integrates policy design and technology development.
- Tools to enable innovation, transformation and simulation of global energy systems through strategic basic research.
Through its research program, MITEI addresses a critical link in the energy innovation chain—the pairing of MIT’s world-class research teams with the best in industry who will be responsible for moving the products of this collaboration into the energy marketplace. The structure of MITEI supports research that addresses key industrial concerns including the development through basic research of enabling energy technologies that have the potential to address multiple energy challenges; the delivery of energy products and services at scale; and the provision of energy products and services in highly complex policy, legal and regulatory environments.
Specific MIT research focus areas include:
- Advanced nuclear fission
- Biofuels
- Buildings/urban design
- Conversion
- Enabling sciences
- Global climate change
- Industrial processes
- Markets and policy
- Oceans
- Oil and gas
- Sequestration
- Solar
- Geothermal
- Storage
- Systems/power
- Vehicles/transportation systems
For more information on MITEI, visit our website at http://web.mit.edu/mitei/.
MITEI UROP funding is available to support undergraduates in any department who are undertaking energy-relevant research. Students can find energy UROPs listed on our website. Students are selected for these UROPs through a competitive process. We are also happy to review requests for funding from undergraduates who have already found a placement in an energy-related research group. Please contact the MITEI Education Office directly with your funding request, or with any other questions you may have.
In general, MITEI UROP funding is provided by members of the MIT Energy Initiative, including individual Affiliate Members with a particular interest in support undergraduate research. Private donors also provide support for MITEI UROPs.
The Laboratory for Energy and the Environment (LFEE), housed within the MIT Energy Initiative, coordinates research and education at the intersection of energy and the environment as well as other global environmental challenges.
LFEE offers two special UROP programs:
- Campus Sustainability UROPs, offered in conjunction with the Environmental Programs Office, give undergraduates a chance to be involved in research while also contributing to programs that reduce the energy and resource footprint of the MIT campus. Funding is provided for students to work with both a faculty supervisor and an operations advisor on a project that examines energy use, energy production, water use, resource use, recycling, transportation or any of a variety of campus sustainability topics.
- Martin Family UROPs with the sponsorship of the Martin Family Foundation. A Martin Family UROP works under the supervision of a Martin Graduate Fellow working on sustainability research. These placements may be in any of a wide variety of science, engineering, social science or humanities fields. For more information on current Martin research areas, review the Martin Fellows profiles at the Martin Fellowship website.
For more information on LFEE, visit our website at http://lfee.mit.edu. For information on current UROP opportunities at LFEE, go to http://lfee.mit.edu/urops. LFEE UROPs are administered by the staff of the MITEI Education Office. |
